Past Due

Chapter 55

“TOMMY TOLD ME it was easy money. We cased it one night, the next we got high and went out to do it. Drove the van up, snapped the chain, opened the gate, went right in. Stealing those motorcycles was the simplest thing.”

“Why would you put yourselves at such risk?” Kimberly asked. “Tommy was headed to an Ivy League school, you were bound for glory on the basketball court. You guys had everything going for you.”

“That was the point. It wasn’t the first job we ever did, the bike thing, believe me. But everyone wanted something from us. He was his mother’s prince, I was, like, the coach’s dream on the basketball court. But we also smoked pot, screwed all the loose girls we could find, stole stuff. It was a way of keeping a part of ourselves for ourselves. And then we stole the bikes.

“We used a board as a ramp, loaded the van. One bike fell off the ramp, dented the gas tank, made all kinds of racket. Scared me shitless, but Tommy just shrugged and took another one. Three bikes. All loaded up, we replaced the chain and were gone. Done. Except Tommy wanted to test the merchandise.

“We filled up a gas can at a station and drove out to D.W. Field Park, by Cocksucker Cove – named for obvious reasons – and took out two of the bikes. When we kicked them up, God, they were screaming. I showed him how they worked, this is the gearshift, the clutch, the gas, the break. He was still trying to figure it all out when I stomped into first and blasted out. It wasn’t long before Tommy caught up. No helmets, no nothing, we just rode. The wind blasting our teeth. On a lark, we turned off road and started riding on the golf course, across the fairways, tearing up the greens. Nothing felt better then tearing up them greens. Too bad it wasn’t Thorny Lea.

“Next thing I know I see Tommy atop the big hill by the stone observation tower. I rode up after him and right away I knew what he had in mind. This was the sledding hill. He wanted to go down. Hell if I was going to let him go first. I shot past him and then I was flying. The path dived down and I did too. But when I landed I landed wrong. Put down my foot to catch my balance, my knee locked and that – and that was the end of the leg.”

He lifted up his beer, looked into it as if looking for something he had misplaced long ago, took a long drink from the bottle. It was hard to watch, the way he drank, with his eyes closed, as if trying to pull something from the bottle.

“By the time Tommy came up to me I was screaming, the leg was flopping and bleeding. He did what he could, but what could he do? He tried to lift me up so I could walk, but I couldn’t move. Bones were shattered, I was bleeding and in shock. So he took off his jacket and wrapped it around the leg and sped off with his bike.

“It took me about a minute before I realized, with this demented certainty, that he wasn’t coming back. I was still high, and that’s the way you think when you’re high, but it was also Tommy, and I knew Tommy. He’d just leave, I figured, and hope the situation would go away. I screamed for help – nothing. The bugs started coming, crawling on my face and hands, lapping the blood. I tried to drag myself to help, but the bones were moving around in there. I was sure I was going to die, to bleed to death. And then something big and black flew down and settled beside me, its head bobbing like it was ready to tear me to pieces, like I was already dead. I laid back, gave the hell up.

“That’s when Tommy showed up again, that son of a bitch. I was never so happy to see anyone in my life, ever. He showed. With his father, who Tommy hated. They made a stretcher out of something and carried me back along the path to a clearing where a car was parked. They put me in the backseat, still lying down. They drove me to the hospital. And as we’re driving, they’re talking to me about what I ought to do, Tommy and Tommy’s dad. I’m passing out from the pain and they’re talking like two lawyers. I should just say I fell at my house, they told me. I was a big basketball hero, they wouldn’t do anything much to me. There was no reason to get everyone in trouble.”

“So what did you do?” said Kimberly.

“What they said to do. He was my friend, squealing wasn’t going to help my leg. And they were right. Cops found the crashed-up bike, the busted lock at the bike shop, figured out what had happened, and even so I only got six months’ probation. Everyone figured it was a prank and that I had paid enough with the injury, which I suppose I had. My leg was so broken up I never played again. That was college for me. I just didn’t have any interest after that.”

“What about Tommy?”

“Nothing. He came to visit me in the hospital and slipped me a couple hundred, my share of the money for the two bikes he sold. I didn’t see him much after that. He said it was safer if we didn’t hang out together. Safer for him, he meant. He went off to his college in Philadelphia and that was it, the end of Tommy Greeley in my life.”

“But it wasn’t the end, was it?” I said.

“Sure it was.”

“No,” I said. “Not by a long shot.”

“How do you know?”

“By the fear in your eyes.”

He shrugged, finished off his beer.

“Go ahead, Jimmy,” said Kimberly.

“All right. What the hell. This is now five, six years after. It took me a while to come to grips with everything, it took years. I was a mess, but then I got hold of myself. I got off the drugs, stopped smoking, I lost weight. I found a job working this giant copier at some big company, making nothing, ten grand a year, but it was something. I even got a girl, a nice girl that I knew from high school. I was making a life, not what it would have been before the accident, but a life. And then, out of the blue, Tommy calls.

“I been hearing about Tommy, his mother had been bragging, how he’s now in law school, how he’s doing so well, how he got involved in some business and was already making real money. Tommy was Mr. Success.”

“How did that make you feel, hearing that?” said Kimberly.

“How the hell do you think? But I was dealing with it. And then Tommy calls. Says he’s going to send something up. Something that will be worth my while. Along with some instructions. And he does. UPS. I sign for it. A big brown box.”

“What was inside?” says Kimberly.

“You have to understand, I was getting things together. I was making a new life for myself. I was getting close to happy. There is something very soothing in diminished expectations.”

“What was inside?”

“A small boom box, with a selection of tapes. I thought it was a strange gift. Why was he sending me this? But there wasn’t tapes in the tapes. Instead there was newspaper balled up, and nestled in the newspaper were glass vials. I knew what was in them right away, and I could tell the weight too. He had sent me ounces. Eight of them. Half a pound. You know how much half a pound of coke was worth in those days? I did, I had bought enough grams in the bad times. I was never much for math but drugs sharpen your arithmetic, no doubt about it. Grams were 75 bucks a pop. Twenty-eight grams to an ounce, so an ounce was worth $2,100. Eight ounces was worth $16,800. And you know what I paid up front for it all? Nothing. Nothing.

“He sent up a letter with some names and his instructions. He told me how to prove up the quality with methanol and a spoon. And he told me how much to take out as my cut. He was setting me up in business. His business. Tommy Greeley thought he was doing me a favor. He was going to make me rich, the son of a bitch. There was a guy in a bar. The name was in the letter. He tested it and bought three. A few of the other names came through. One bought two. Two more bought one each. It was so damn easy.”

“You said there were eight ounces,” said Kimberly. “You only told us about seven.”

“I had to test it, didn’t I? And then I had to test it some more. I ended up doing the whole eighth myself. And with some of the cash I bought myself a new car. Why not, right? So what I sent down to Tommy wasn’t as much as I was supposed to send. But he didn’t seem to care. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, and he sent up more right away. Federal Express this time. Next thing you know I was in the business. But I was using now and, after my girl left because of the drugs, I was spending even more money trying to live the life, getting farther into debt. I owed him five, I owed him ten, fifteen. It didn’t matter because he kept on sending stuff up. Eight ounces at a time. Then a pound. I had so much stuff I had to front people myself, and not everyone was paying everything they owed, so I grew deeper into Tommy’s debt. Twenty. Twenty-five. I quit my real job. How could I spend nine to five making ten a year when I owed Tommy Greeley thirty thousand dollars?

“As the quantities grew, he started sending up a courier, a motorcycle guy, who would drop off the stuff and remind me, to the dollar, of how much I owed. Thirty-five. Forty. Where was I ever going to find that kind of money outside the business? I was trapped. But still, from Tommy, it was like, whenever. No pressure from him to pay what I owed. Until it was no longer whenever, until it was right fucking now.”

“When was this?”

“Just before he disappeared. He phoned me late one night. He was at a pay phone, that’s what he used for business, and he said he needed the money I owed. By then it was like seventy-five grand and there was no way. ‘Don’t say you can’t,’ he told me, ‘after all I’ve done for you.’ How could I respond to that? He told me to open an account and put all my cash in the bank. Then sell my car, my stereo, whatever I had, and put that in too. Get checks for everything so there won’t be a trail. And then collect all the money I was owed. Hire a thug if I had to and collect it. Give a discount for checks and put everything in the bank. And when you’ve got everything, wire it to an account. He gave me the number. It was something offshore, I think. I thought of just stiffing him, wondered what he could do about it, but then I remembered the motorcycle guy. So I did as he said. I sold my car, moved the merchandise I had, collected what I could. It wasn’t much. I ended up with about twenty-five thousand and I wired twenty of it to that account.”

“You kept five for yourself?” said Kimberly.

“Yeah, I mean, yeah. And I’m glad I did. Because that was the end of the line. No more shipments, no more deals. I was left with the five thousand, sure, but no car, no job, and an addiction I couldn’t afford to feed. I tried to keep the business going, tried to find a supplier, but what the hell did I know, really? I ended up going to Cambridge and working out a shipment from an under-cover cop and that was the end of that. Seven years. A third off for good behavior, a third off for parole, but still.”

“You ever talk to Tommy after that call?”

“No.”

“Ever hear from him?”

“No.” But when he said it his gaze slid down to the empty bottle of beer in his hands, and his knuckles were white.

The fear, where did that come from? I wondered, as I ordered us another round. The one thing I still couldn’t quite figure was why he was so spooked at seeing us. Why had we frightened him so? Why had he thought it necessary to draw a gun? I thought back over it all and I remembered what he had said the first time he saw us. You don’t look like arm breakers, he had said. And how he made sure to tell us there was nothing here for us. And how he said, when he saw us at his house, that he didn’t have what we were looking for. What did he think we were looking for? And then it hit me.

Lawyers are, at heart, archaeologists. Our job is to excavate history, to burrow into the dirt and pull out our shards of evidence. With enough shards you can reconstruct the pot, with enough pots you can reconstruct the past. We send out our document requests like telegrams to the past; what we get back are boxes. And somewhere in those boxes lay the outlines of our most precious tool: the story. Some lawyers see the cardboard cubes being wheeled into their offices and they cringe at the thought of all that paper to review, but not me. For me, each box represents a square plot of land at an ancient site, something to be dug into, sifted, organized, reviewed. And believe me when I tell you this, there is always a box.

“Let’s hear the rest,” I said.

“I didn’t leave anything out.”

“Oh yes, you did. Tell us about the box.”

He startled for a second. “How did you know?”

“It’s my job to know.”

“Fucking lawyers.”

“Yes we are,” I said.

“What did he send you, Sully?” said Kimberly.

He paused for a moment, looked at Kimberly’s wide eyes and small mouth, took a sip of his fresh beer. “A big tool locker,” he said finally. “Red and black. Padlocked shut.”

“When?”

“After I wired the money. He told me to bury it somewhere. That someone would come looking for it someday and until then to just keep it safe.”

“And you thought Kimberly and I were the someones he referred to?”

“Yes.”

“But you were scared. You pulled a gun on us. You were frightened, so you didn’t keep it safe, did you?”

He didn’t answer.

I lowered my voice. “It’s all right. What else could he have expected. You were strung out and broke and you thought there might be some drugs inside, didn’t you?”

“If I was strong enough I wouldn’t have been in that mess in the first place.”

“So you opened it.”

“Snapped the lock.”

“What was inside?”

“Crap. Nothing. Books, pictures, crap.”

“But it’s not the crap that has you so scared, is it, Sully? What else was in the locker? Drugs?”

“No.”

“Money?”

“Yeah.”

“How much?”

“A hundred thou.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“Yeah.”

“And you took it.”

“I was going to put most of it back.”

“But you didn’t.”

“What do you think?”

“I think you pissed it away.”

“Yeah. Maybe I did. Some. Most. And the rest I gave to my new girlfriend to stash. For when I got out.”

“And did she.”

“I don’t know. That was the last I ever saw of her.”

“Good choice.”

“Well, you know, she seemed pretty reliable with money. She was a stripper.”

“It’s amazing how that works. And since then every stranger who stepped your way made you jumpy. Every stranger might be the stranger who would ask for the box, and open it up, and see what was missing, and look to get it back.”

He drained his beer, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he drank.

“In all those years, anyone ever come asking for it?” I said.

“No. Not until now.”

“You mean us.”

“Not just you.”

Kimberly and leaned forward and stared at him. “Go ahead, Sully,” she said.

“I got a call, not too long ago. Just a call. A voice I didn’t recognize. It asked about the package I was keeping safe. I said I don’t know what he was talking about. It asked again, told me to think back twenty years. I said I didn’t know what he was talking about. The voice told me to expect a visitor. That’s all I heard, and then you guys showed up.”

I looked at Kimberly, whose wide eyes were now wide with the big questions. Who had known? Who had called?

“The voice,” I asked, all the while watching Kimberly’s expression, “was it British?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It was.”

And Kimberly’s pretty wide eyes widened even farther. “Colfax?” she said.

“Who?” said Jimmy.

“That’s right,” I said.

“How’d he know about it?” she said.

“Who?” said Jimmy.

“What did you do with the other crap in the toolbox?” I said.

“Left it there,” said Jimmy.

“In the box?”

“Yeah.”

“Where is it now?”

“Buried. I moved it to the basement of the place I live at now.”

“Let’s dig it up.”

“No. They might come for it.”

“Tell you what, Sully. I’ll take it off your hands, which will be a relief for you. And I can work it so you never get that visitor you’ve been fearing.”

“You’re full of shit. You can’t do that.”

“I’m a lawyer,” I said. “I can walk through walls.”

“Now I know you’re full of shit.”

“Trust me.”

He laughed a sad, rueful laugh. “Do I got any choice?”

“Let’s go dig it up,” I said.

And we did.